The Other Path
by thingamawhatsit
Summary: Razer returns earlier then expected, and everything is different. "Ilana, of the Forgotten Zone..."


Sometimes Ilana hates him. For leaving her, for making her wait, for making her worry, for half a dozen things that she wishes he was with her to share. At first because she didn't think he could do it. Because she thought it some fools quest that would end up with nothing more than Razer in pieces, and her with nothing but a letter in hand telling her he had been "a brave and valiant fighter for the cause."

She should have known better then to doubt him. As though her stubborn man, the man who scavenges parts from their lost civilization and makes them sing with purpose again, as though he would manage anything less then what he set his mind to.

Every letter she receives, secreted away to her in every which way Razer can manage, tells her again and again of the same story. Battles fought and won, sometimes by brute strength but more often with the help of Razer and his creations, rank and loyalties gained, and the assurance that soon he will return, and when he does they will be _safe._

She keeps herself and her people fed and safe, moving when they have to, staying when they can, and she waits for his return, one way or another. And part of her hates him for it.

oOo

The man catches her alone, laying things out in an old hide-out, a place that she and Razer had hidden before. His face is scarred, the gashes cutting across his markings grotesquely, and as he pins her to the wall, arm against her throat so she can't scream, she watches it twist into a cruel smile.

"You know," he says, "I think I'm going to enjoy this so much I would almost have done it for free."

She has a moment to think of the irony, that for all that Razer is the one off at war she's the one that will die on a blades end when a roar echoes from the entryway, and the weight lifts leaving her gasping on the ground.

The fighting is quick and brutal.

The man goes down, a blow to the head and several small wounds taking their toll, and Ilana rushes to Razer, throwing herself into his arms. He drops his sword and shield, and his wrap lightly around her back, his head coming to rest upon her own.

"You're _back_," she says, every other matter flushed from her mind by the single thought.

He sighs, leaning heavily on her. "Ilana," he whispers, leaning _too _heavily on her. She staggers backwards, and his legs buckle underneath him, dragging them both down to the floor.

She runs her hands over him desperately, looking for some hidden wound, and finds only a small slash across his upper arm. "Razer. _Razer_."

He gasps, a rattling sound that her chest aches to hear. "The blade," he says, "must have been," he breaks off into a coughing fit, the great breaths that he takes shaking him in her arms, "poisoned."

"No. _No. _You can't leave me, you just _came back to me._"

He reaches for her face, his hand falling terrifyingly short, and she grasps it in her own, setting it against her cheek, where Razer likes to lay it when he's comforting her. His voice comes out in pieces, choked and almost unrecognizable, but the words carve themselves into her heart. "_I love you_."

Words flow from her mouth, pleas, and cries, and threats - any number of things, all of them saying _stay, stay, _stay _with me._

He takes a final rattling breath, and convulsions shake his body almost out of her arms.

And then he's still.

She rocks back and forth, tears blurring her vision, and unconsciously begins to hum an old lullaby - _we'll sing this to our children one day, _she remembers_ -_ as though if she only tries hard enough she can make him just asleep, lured there as would be a babe.

The man stirs.

The man who killed Razer _is alive._

There are no thoughts in her actions, only a sudden _fury_ that burns the tears from her eyes, and puts fire in her veins. She grabs Razer's shield from the ground in a two handed grip, and she is hunched over the man, and she is bringing the shield down on him again and again - ignoring the way that the edge cuts and bites into her hands, and her arms are shaking with fatigue.

She drops the shield, and sits back on the stone floor between the bodies of the man she loved and the man she killed starring at the cave wall in front of her until a red light is cast upon the room.

A ring is floating in the air, surrounded by a red light, and from it comes a voice. "Ilana, of the Forgotten Zone, you have great rage in your heart. You belong to the Red Lantern Corp." The ring floats closer, and she can feel in its light the burn that possessed her before. "Give in, the ring knows your pain."

Sometimes she hates Razer. Sometimes she hates the wars. Sometimes she hates the soldiers.

Razer lies dead at her feet, killed by a man sent to take her life, and Ilana hates them all. She hates everyone, and everything, and maybe most of all herself.

She raises her hand, and lets the ring slide upon her finger.


End file.
